The government is planning to hold the fourth Bangladesh-US Partnership Dialogue and Security Dialogue in April to boost relationship.
“We have proposed to hold the dialogues on April 30 and are waiting for the US approval,” a senior official of the Foreign Ministry told the Dhaka Tribune.
The fourth partnership dialogue will be held in Dhaka while the security dialogue will be held in Washington. The venues were reversed in the third meeting.
In the partnership dialogue to be held in Dhaka, Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque will lead the Bangladesh side while US State Department Under-secretary Wendy Sherman the US side.
“Wendy Sherman is currently busy with negotiation with Iran on nuclear issue and it is expected that it would be concluded very soon,” he said.
Both the governments will follow the format of last three dialogues and it is expected that no new issue will be included in the negotiation.
“We have lot of things to do and we need to consolidate the existing areas of cooperation,” the official added.
Dhaka is engaged with Washington in a wide range of areas including trade, investment, assistance, security cooperation and people-to-people contact.
In the partnership dialogue, it is expected that both the parties would discuss three broad areas – development and governance, trade and investment, and security cooperation.
In cluster discussion, investment climate, energy, labour and terrorism issues will dominate the dialogue.
In the last partnership dialogue held in Washington in October last year, both the parties in the cluster discussion talked about strengthening democratic institution, civil society, rule of law, climate change, migration and Rohingya, science and technology, labour, blue economy peacekeeping and law enforcement.
Education, diaspora, culture, regional integration, human rights and security were also discussed. A joint statement had been issued after the dialogue.
Another Foreign Ministry official said the Fourth Security Dialogue is proposed to be held in Washington.
“We are working on it and hope to have a good meeting,” he said.
Last time, the Security Dialogue was held in Dhaka.